Powering public transport in New Zealand
I recently authored a report for EECA titled “Powering public transport in New Zealand.” In this report we considered a range of emerging public transport technologies and whether they might be suited to small to medium sized cities in New Zealand.…
48 Comments Rodney Hide redux
It’s amazing what happens when you only look at one element of planning and then slap your own anti-urban ideology on top of it. Let’s just change a few things in Rodney Hide’s column today:
There are many reasons why Auckland house prices are high.…
HOT Lanes
No. Not anything about the temperature, spicyness or physical attractiveness. High Occupancy Toll Lanes are a fairly recent phenomenon becoming increasingly widespread throughout the USA. A recent Atlantic Cities article covers the introduction of a pretty large scheme, implemented by way of a public private partnership (PPP) in Washington DC:
The expanded roadway – two lanes in each direction, from the I-95 interchange to Tysons Corner – will be made of High-Occupancy Tolls, or HOT lanes.…
“It’s the economy stupid” – Taking New Zealand’s Cities Seriously
Most people who read this blog do so because they are interested in transport. But sometimes I do wonder if we lose sight of the fact that transport is (usually) a means to an end, rather than an end in itself (putting aside purely recreational travel).…
Investing in Public Transport is a Chicken or Egg debate
In New Zealand, the provision of public transport seems to have really gotten into a chicken or egg debate. This is especially so with the current government who are very reluctant to spend any money on improving public transport using the argument that because most people drive, then we should invest in roads.…
October 2012 Patronage Stats
Patronage results for October are out and just like September there was a big drop as we shake off the post RWC boost which made annual figures look good for a while. Here are the Highlights of the report
Annual Auckland public transport patronage for the 12-month period to end-October 2012 was 70,179,157 boardings an increase of +2.2% (+1,516,488 boardings) compared to the 12-month period to end-October 2011.…
Electrifying from Papakura to Pukekohe
Well it looks like Auckland Transport has already started responding to the calls by new chairman Lester Levy to be more transparent. The AT board meets next week and one interesting paper going to them in the open session is the business case for extending electrification from Papakura to Pukekohe.…
Grids Gone Wild, Episode 1
Continuing on from my recent post on our troublesome speed limits, I wanted to further document some of the other problems I see on local streets. I have a particular fondness for our streetcar neighbourhoods with their old homes and regular gridded street network.…
Thoughts from “Road to Ruin”
Another fascinating book that I am reading at the moment is “Road to Ruin: an introduction to sprawl and how to cure it” by Dom Nozzi. Like my previous post on How Cities Work, the key point made in Road to Ruin (at least so far) is how important the transport decisions we make are in determining the nature of our urban environments.…
Auckland’s Rail Signalling System
A few months ago we learned just how fragile our train system is, even after re signalling it when the the whole system was brought to its knees due to a faulty power supply that that fed the desk from which the Auckland network is managed from.…
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